Introduction
When al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) expanded from Algeria into the Sahel, it became part of a broader evolution in how terrorist organisations generate and sustain revenue. Today, groups like Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State–Sahel Province (ISSP), and Boko Haram still use traditional channels, but increasingly draw on informal economies, illicit markets, local taxation, resource extraction, and digital tools to fund their operations.
That evolution poses a critical challenge for AML/CFT professionals. Risk assessments and controls built around identifiable transactions and cross-border flows risk missing financing that is generated and circulated largely within local economic systems. As the counter-terrorist financing landscape shifts, practitioners and policymakers must adapt their frameworks to match this reality and sharpen the tools used to detect and disrupt it.
What the Method Was Before
Earlier terrorism financing in the region was comparatively legible to financial intelligence. Groups were more hierarchical and dependent on identifiable external funding, including wire transfers, foreign donations, and hawala networks connecting supporters abroad with operatives on the ground.
These methods were not necessarily easy to detect, but they generated financial footprints. FATF and GIABA typologies[i] highlighted mechanisms such as cash couriers, fictitious companies, and the misuse of NGOs and charitable structures. These remain relevant but no longer capture the full spectrum of financing risks. Many AML/CFT frameworks were designed around cross-border, transaction-based financing involving identifiable intermediaries.
How It Has Changed — What It Is Now
By the 2010s, the financing ecosystem had become more diversified. The consolidation of JNIM and Islamic State-linked groups in the Sahel, alongside Boko Haram’s factionalisation in the Lake Chad Basin, reflected a broader transition towards locally generated and decentralised revenue.
RUSI’s research[ii] on organised crime, terrorism, and insecurity in Africa describes these threats as increasingly interconnected rather than discrete phenomena. For AML/CFT professionals, the significance is that terrorist organisations increasingly generate revenue by exploiting the economic environments in which they operate.
Three financing ecosystems are particularly important.
Resource and Territorial Extraction: JNIM and other armed groups have been associated with revenue generation through artisanal gold mining, taxation of miners and transport routes, livestock theft, and levies imposed on communities. Mines near attack sites have been linked to approximately 727 kilograms of gold annually, valued at around US$34 million[iii].
Criminal-Market Financing: Kidnapping, cattle rustling, trafficking, and smuggling provide additional revenue opportunities where terrorist or terrorist-linked groups are involved. Between July 2024 and June 2025, at least 4,722 people were abducted in Nigeria across 997 incidents; 762 hostages were killed, while kidnappers collected approximately US$1.66 million in ransom payments[iv]. Although not all incidents constitute terrorism financing, where terrorist groups participate, ransom can become a direct revenue stream.
Decentralised, low-cost financing: Small cells and individual actors may rely on legitimate income, petty crime, community support, or coercion. These models require little capital and may leave minimal conventional financial footprints.
The AML/CFT implication is significant: Many contemporary financing mechanisms operate outside formal financial channels. The problem is therefore not simply inadequate transaction-monitoring thresholds; the underlying revenue-generating activity may never enter the regulated financial system in an identifiable form.
How Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs) Are Being Used Now
NPOs remain vulnerable because the capabilities terrorist groups seek, raising funds, moving resources, and building community influence, can overlap with legitimate charitable activity. FATF’s risk-based approach recognises that NPOs are vulnerable to abuse rather than inherently suspicious, supporting targeted oversight rather than blanket de-risking.
FATF and GIABA case studies have identified vulnerabilities involving weak registration frameworks, fictitious companies operating alongside genuine charities, and the infiltration or misuse of legitimate organisations. Other financing methods bypass formal NPO structures entirely, including forced “donations” extracted from vulnerable communities.
For practitioners, NPO risk must therefore be assessed in context. Effective oversight requires understanding the operating environment, not simply compliance with registration and reporting requirements.
New Technologies Enabling New Trends
Technology is not replacing traditional financing methods; it is expanding the range of tools available to terrorist financiers. Cash and hawala remain relevant, while digital channels may offer greater speed, reach, or anonymity.
Digital payments: Mobile money and digital wallets can facilitate rapid, low-value transfers. Multiple accounts, SIM-card churn, and agent networks can complicate attribution and monitoring.
Virtual assets: Cryptocurrency adoption remains uneven, with cash-based taxation and extortion still more significant in many cases. Nevertheless, peer-to-peer platforms and virtual assets provide additional channels for fundraising and cross-border value transfer. A 2025 enforcement operation reportedly resulted in 83 arrests, including 18 linked to virtual-asset misuse, while approximately US$260 million in currency holdings were screened for potential terrorism links[v].
Digital fundraising: Social media, messaging, crowdfunding, livestreaming, subscriptions, and digital tipping are creating new financing pathways by combining communication, fundraising, and payment functionality. FATF’s June 2026’s work on social media, messaging, and streaming platforms highlights the challenge for national risk assessments and financial institutions[vi].
The common thread is opportunism. Terrorist financiers select the mechanism that offers the most effective combination of cost, speed, accessibility, and resistance to detection.
Implications for West Africa’s AML/CFT Frameworks
Three structural challenges stand out.
The visibility gap: A significant proportion of terrorism financing may be generated outside the regulated financial sector, including through informal trade, mining, livestock markets, and community-level taxation.
The typology gap: Traditional AML/CFT controls focus heavily on suspicious transactions and cross-border transfers, while contemporary financing increasingly involves economic activity, illicit-market revenue, and hybrid licit-illicit flows.
The intelligence gap: Financial intelligence cannot be interpreted effectively in isolation. Assessing whether activity involving gold, livestock, cash, trade, or mobile money presents a terrorism financing risk may require intelligence from law enforcement, customs, tax authorities, mining regulators, border agencies, and security services.
For financial institutions, this means strengthening contextual risk assessment and typologies alongside transaction monitoring. For FIUs, regulators, and policymakers, it means improving information-sharing across financial, criminal, economic, and security domains.
Why This Matters for AML/CFT Risk Assessment
The evolving terrorism-financing landscape has four important implications for risk assessment:
- Context matters: Risk assessments should consider local economic, conflict, and geographic conditions, not terrorist group affiliation alone. JNIM and Islamic State-linked groups exploit different revenue opportunities, meaning the same group may present different financing risks across jurisdictions.
- Regional exposure matters: Countries such as Ghana may face terrorism-financing exposure through regional spillover, including transit, logistics, informal value transfer, and the potential laundering of proceeds generated in neighbouring conflict zones, even where domestic terrorist activity remains limited.
- Economic ecosystems matter: National risk assessments that focus primarily on terrorist group presence may underestimate exposure. They should also map the economic ecosystems through which terrorist organisations generate, move, and store value.
- Terrorism Financing (TF) and Proliferation Financing (PF) risks can overlap: Shell companies, trade-based money laundering, informal cross-border commerce, and weak controls over dual-use goods may provide infrastructure that can be exploited by both TF and PF actors. Institutions that assess these risks separately may overlook shared vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
Effective counter-terrorist financing in the region can no longer depend solely on tracing proceeds. It must also identify the economic ecosystems through which terrorism financing is generated and sustained. For financial institutions, FIUs, regulators, and policymakers, this means strengthening contextual risk assessments and typologies while connecting financial intelligence with information on illicit markets, conflict dynamics, informal economies, and cross-border networks.
References
[i] Financial Action Task Force (FATF) & GIABA, Terrorist Financing in West Africa (2013). www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/reports/TF-in-West-Africa.pdf
[ii] Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Organised Crime, Terror and Insecurity in Africa (OCTA).
[iii] Africa Defense Forum, “The Currency of Terror” (May 2026). https://adf-magazine.com/2026/05/the-currency-of-terror
[iv] Africa Defense Forum, “The Currency of Terror” (May 2026).https://adf-magazine.com/2026/05/the-currency-of-terror
[v] Africa Defense Forum, “The Currency of Terror” (May 2026).https://adf-magazine.com/2026/05/the-currency-of-terror
[vi] FATF, Detecting and Disrupting Terrorist Financing Activity through Social Media, Instant Messaging Applications and Streaming Platforms (SMSPs) (June 2026). www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Methodsandtrends/detecting-and-disrupting-tf-through-smsps.html
